Iain Martin is a political commentator, and a former editor of The Scotsman and former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the men who blew up the British economy, published by Simon & Schuster.. As well as this blog, he writes a column for The Sunday Telegraph. You can read more about Iain by visiting his website

Thank goodness they don't run the country in such a slapdash fashion…

Meetings not minuted, encounters not entered in the diary, breathless texts flying around, cosy country suppers at which none of the high-powered people involved can remember much about what was discussed and a pervading sense that those in charge aren't quite sure what they are doing. Thank goodness the current government reserves this approach for its dealings with Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants. It would be awful if they ran the country in such a slapdash fashion.

Mind you, if the evidence at Leveson does point to a wider pattern of behaviour the memoirs of those at the top of this government are going to be disappointingly hazy when the time comes. Here's David Cameron writing in "My Journey", published in 2017: "It was 2010 and it was time for the election I had been waiting five years to fight. Or was it six years I had been waiting? In fact, was it actually 2010 when the election was held? I don't recall. I can't answer that question. But frankly, the main point is…"

At Leveson today, the consensus was that Robert Jay QC would not land a glove on David Cameron. In the first few minutes the Prime Minister looked uncomfortable but he quickly seemed to settle in when Leveson wanted to dwell, once again for too long, on the difference between newspapers and television. (The former is made of paper and the latter is what you are on, sir, although there is now a half way house known as the internet, which shows signs of catching on).

Then it started to unravel when Jay moved on to cross-examining Cameron on his relationship with the Murdochs and Rebekah Brooks. An icy and coolly-determined Jay detonated a key text from Brooks to Cameron at just the right moment. The content was cringeworthy and judging by the look on Cameron's face he knew that the next day's papers had just been gifted their headline.

Brooks texted on the eve of Mr Cameron's 2009 conference speech: "I am so rooting for you tomorrow not just as a proud friend but because professionally we’re definitely in this together! Speech of your life? Yes he Cam!"

In this together was the most damaging line, because it looks clubby and conspiratorial and contrasts so neatly with the Government's austerity-inspired assurance that "we are all in this together."

One of the most striking aspects of this affair is the way in which it reveals, again, how power has been traded by the political media elite in the last two decades. David Cameron knows Matthew Freud (PR guru, son-in-law and fixer to Rupert Murdoch) very well, but he said under questioning that he genuinely had no idea what Freud's political views are. Both inhabit a gilded world in which ideas, beliefs and convictions are secondary, or even irrelevant, and what matters most is winning or being close to the winners. In one sense this approach is as old as human history, but our current elite (in which I include pre-2010 Labour) has made this cynical modus operandi completely dominant.

Cameron is back up now, as I write. He will need a much better performance in the second half.